dull and unexciting, is the prospect of bettering their own economic
condition and that of their family; and the closer the connection of
every increase of exertion with a corresponding increase of its
fruits, the more powerful is this motive. To suppose the contrary
would be to imply that with men as they now are, duty and honor are
more powerful principles of action than personal interest, not solely
as to special acts and forbearances respecting which those sentiments
have been exceptionally cultivated, but in the regulation of their
whole lives; which no one, I suppose, will affirm. It may be said that
this inferior efficacy of public and social feelings is not
inevitable--is the result of imperfect education. This I am quite
ready to admit, and also that there are even now many individual
exceptions to the general infirmity. But before these exceptions can
grow into a majority, or even into a very large minority, much time
will be required. The education of human beings is one of the most
difficult of all arts, and this is one of the points in which it has
hitherto been least successful; moreover improvements in general
education are necessarily very gradual because the future generation
is educated by the present, and the imperfections of the teachers set
an invincible limit to the degree in which they can train their pupils
to be better than themselves. We must therefore expect, unless we are
operating upon a select portion of the population, that personal
interest will for a long time be a more effective stimulus to the most
vigorous and careful conduct of the industrial business of society
than motives of a higher character. It will be said that at present
the greed of personal gain by its very excess counteracts its own end
by the stimulus it gives to reckless and often dishonest risks. This
it does, and under Communism that source of evil would generally be
absent. It is probable, indeed, that enterprise either of a bad or of
a good kind would be a deficient element, and that business in general
would fall very much under the dominion of routine; the rather, as the
performance of duty in such communities has to be enforced by external
sanctions, the more nearly each person's duty can be reduced to fixed
rules, the easier it is to hold him to its performance. A circumstance
which increases the probability of this result is the limited power
which the managers would have of independent action. They would of
course hold their authority from the choice of the community, by whom
their function might at any time be withdrawn from them; and this
would make it necessary for them, even if not so required by the
constitution of the community, to obtain the general consent of the
body before making any change in the established mode of carrying on
the concern. The difficulty of persuading a numerous body to make a
change in their accustomed mode of working, of which change the
trouble is often great, and the risk more obvious to their minds than